This week’s prompt for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Challenge”. That opens up lots of possibilities – the first is which is the challenge of me getting it done in time. In that I failed – it’s a couple of days into week 3 already…

I decided for this that I’d explore some of the challenges my ancestors faced when deciding to uproot themselves from England and Scotland, and make their way to New Zealand – clear around the other side of the world.

The first ones to leave were William Moffat and his new bride Ellen Houliston. They married in Scotland in 1857, and then immediately after departed on the ship “Titan” to Victoria Australia, where William got a job working in the Victoria Goldfields. What a challenge that must have been to sail almost halfway around the world in search of a dream. A family history compiled in 1960 contains this quote:Continue reading »

For the last year I had been following Amy Johnson Crow’s series of prompts for blogging about your ancestors and genealogy research – 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – but never quite managed to get started, and almost before I knew it the prompt for Week 52 was upon us, and I hadn’t yet done Week 1. So here we are almost at the end of Week 1 of 2019, and this is my start. This is what Amy sent out for January:

Week 1: First
Who was the first ancestor you found who you didn’t personally know? Who was the first ancestor to arrive in the country? Who was the first child in one of your ancestral families? First to go to college? First husband out of a string of many?

I decided not to answer any of those questions, but rather just get my first post completed and published before Week 1 had ended.Continue reading »

It’s February 2018 – that means RootsTech is coming up, and Lisa and I are off to Salt Lake City for a week of genealogy fun, friends fun, and some sightseeing.

We arrived on Saturday, 24 February and as usual picked up a rental car so that we could head off on Sunday for “Bloody Tourist Sunday”. This year’s destination was to “Golden Spike National Historic Site” – the site where in 1869 the railroads that were being built from east and west of the United States met and were joined with the ceremonial hamming in of the last railway spike – the Golden Spike.

Then since it was such a nice day, we headed out to Antelope Island for a rather chilly visit.

Below are 3 panoramic shots taken with multiple overlapping images on my Canon 70D camera and then joined together in Lightroom.

Another “must visit” on this trip to Wellington was the Mount Bruce Wildlife Centre. They are very well known for their captive breeding efforts of rare and endangered birds, and my particular interest was the Campbell Island Teal – a small flightless duck that had become extinct on Campbell Island, but which survived on an off-shore island. When I was at Campbell Island in about 1990 Department of Conservation (DOC) sent a team down to go to Dent Island to capture some of these teal to bring them to Mount Bruce to breed in captivity prior to the massive effort to remove the rats from Campbell Island, after which the Teal would be returned. This was all remarkably successful – rats gone, teal bred and over 150 of them were returned to Campbell Island. I had been hoping that some remained at Mount Bruce, but alas they had all been returned to Campbell Island some years ago, so we didn’t get a chance to see them, but we did get a chance to see other birds – some like the Takahe and Kaka we’d seen at Zealandia the previous day, others like the Kakariki, and the Kiwi we hadn’t seen yet.

A couple of particular highlights – the Kiwi egg in the incubator that we could see where the chick inside was pipping away at the shell ready to break out, and also seeing the very rare white Kiwi Manukura running around in the darkened enclosure foraging for food. Since the Kiwis are nocturnal, they are very hard to see in the dim light available in the enclosure, but we did get to see the pair of them.

And a great visit with Marlene – Marlene and I were at school together from 1962 when we were both 7 year old founding pupils at Fernlea School in Wainuiomata, through to the end of 1971 when she finished her 6th Form year and went off to journalism school – 45½ years ago – we hadn’t seen each other since until this day.

We arrived in Wellington mid-Friday morning, having left Michigan late Wednesday afternoon – about 24 hours of travel in 3 flights from Grand Rapids – Houston – Auckland – Wellington. Once the rental car was picked up (it took a while as apparently the Dixie Chicks were playing Napier tonight and so the rental car outfit had 40 cars scheduled for pickup today, many of them to do with that concert) it was off to Zealandia to have lunch and see the wildlife there.

A great day of weather for it, and I got to see 3 species I’ve never seen in the wild before – the Takahē, which was thought to be extinct until it was discovered in a remote part of New Zealand in 1948, The playful Kākā – kind of a cousin to the Kea, and the Tuatara a lizard species that has its origins 200 million years ago!! (I have seen Tuatara before in more captive situations like museums, but not out in a vast area like we saw them today.) I had never seen Kākā or Takahē until today.

A compilation from the Franklin Series 11 Parts Book combining the listing of wiring, with wire sizes, colours and the types of terminals on the ends of the wires. In a small number of cases the wire is more than one wire made as a part, so a 5 digit Franklin Drawing number is given with no wire specifications.

The terminals are “decoded” with the diagram at the end of this post that shows the type and dimensions of the various specified terminals. The most common type – “30 x 31” is mentioned in more detail in this posting.

Many of the wiring connections on my 1926 Franklin are made with ring terminals as shown in these images. The wire is wrapped around the end of the terminal and then the “legs” folded over like an eyelet/rivet as used in clothing, shoes, etc.

The insulation has broken off and shows the wire on the left, through the terminal and wrapped around the eyelet hole which is crimped over the wires.

Shows the legs lifted up enough to free the wire, and the wire partly unwound from the terminal.

From Franklin Series 11A parts manual shows their description of these terminals, and that had I been around 90 years ago I could buy them for $0.01 each!

Several hours of searching online have failed to reveal anyone selling these in 2016 – 90 years later, but did turn up the patent applied for in 1923, granted in 1928 for the machine to put these terminals on the wire. See https://www.google.com/patents/US1677968.

In the USA the Monarch butterfly populations are very mobile – wintering in Mexico, but traveling the length of the continent almost to breed in Canada and the northern tier of US states before flying back to Mexico. In Christchurch, New Zealand, the Monarchs remain in the city it seems, wintering over in a few parks spread around the city.

I set out to find some of them today, but alas a cold spell a few weeks ago had killed a lot of them. But I did find some at Abberley Park in St Albans, mostly high up in a tree sunning themselves in the Winter sun.

A visit to Christchurch, New Zealand by Roger and his siblings for a family get together with Dad. Roger flew out from the USA, Alistair came over from Melbourne, Australia, Ruth down from Auckland, New Zealand and we all met at Rachel’s house for lunch.

A visit to Christchurch for a week to see my Dad in August 2016 coincided with the first daffodil blooms in Hagley Park, so after a visit to see Dad on a Saturday afternoon, brother Alistair and I set out in the wee rental car to see if we could find some.

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